BlueDot

BlueDot Inc. (formerly Bio.Diaspora) is a Canadian artificial intelligence software company based in Toronto, Ontario. The company's flagship product is Insights, a software-as-service used to map the spread of infectious diseases.

For other uses of Blue dot, see Blue dot.
BlueDot
FormerlyBio.Diaspora
IndustrySoftware
Founded2009
FounderKamran Khan
Headquarters
Toronto
,
Canada
ProductsBlueDot
Websitehttps://bluedot.global

Background

Founding

The company was initially founded in 2008 under the project name Bio.Diaspora by Dr. Kamran Khan, a professor at the University of Toronto and infectious disease specialist at St. Michael's Hospital.[1] Initial development took place in collaboration with the Centre for Research on Inner City Health, Ryerson University, the University of Manitoba and several commercial airport and air transport organizations.[2]

According to Khan, the project's initial business concept was inspired by the detrimental effects of the 2002–2004 SARS outbreak on the City of Toronto.[3] The company is said to have “attracted interest from public health, biodefense and industry groups worldwide, all of which are looking for real-time, global epidemic intelligence to protect their interests.”[4]

Bio.Diaspora produced a report in 2009 titled “An Analysis of Canada’s Vulnerability to Emerging Infectious Disease Threats via the Global Airline Transportation Network” with funding from the Public Health Agency of Canada.[5]

In June 2011, St. Michael’s Hospital brought Bio.Diaspora to MaRS Innovation for market potential evaluation.[1] By 2011, Bio.Diaspora had helped several countries anticipate and react to the spread of disease at mass gatherings such as the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada and the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, the FIFA World Cup, and the annual Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia.[2]

Bio.Diaspora partnered with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Harvard University to integrate the program with HealthMap, a technology that monitors public websites and global online media for news of emerging diseases.

Relaunch

Bio.Diaspora was relaunched as BlueDot in 2013.[6] After Ebola spread across Africa in 2014, BlueDot predicted its migration out of West Africa and published its results in the The Lancet.[7][8] BlueDot then reportedly predicted a Zika virus outbreak in Florida six months before it occurred.[1][9]

The company secured funding from Horizons Ventures in a Series A round in 2015.[10] This was followed by an additional $9.4 million in 2019, with its primary investors being Horizon Ventures, The Co-operators, and BDC Capital's Women in Technology Venture Fund.[3]

COVID-19

BlueDot and its software received significant coverage during the COVID-19 pandemic, with several jurisdictions using BlueDot software to track outbreaks of COVID-19.[3][11][12]

According to BlueDot, the company was the first in the world to detect the outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 in Wuhan, China. It sent an alert to its customers on December 31, 2019, and used data on airline tickets to accurately predict the virus' apparent travel to Bangkok, Seoul, Taipei, and Tokyo.[12] This came six days before the World Health Organization sent out its own public warning.[13][14][15] In January 2020, the BlueDot team published a rapid communication titled "Pneumonia of unknown aetiology in Wuhan, China: potential for international spread via commercial air travel" in the Journal of Travel Medicine.[16]

On March 23, 2020, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that it had contracted BlueDot through the Public Health Agency of Canada for COVID-19 modelling and monitoring.[17]

In May 2022, it was revealed that BlueDot had used Canadian citizens' cell phone data accessed under direction from PHAC to view a detailed snapshot of people's behaviour, including visits to the grocery store, gatherings with family and friends, time spent at home and trips to other towns and provinces.[18][19]

References
  1. "The first company to identify the coronavirus outbreak – Bluedot". Bayslope. 2020-06-23. Archived from the original on 2022-02-24.
  2. O'Campo, Patricia. "Impact Report 2010/2011" (PDF). Centre for Research on Inner City Health. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2013-07-21. Retrieved 2023-09-19.
  3. Stieg, Cory (2020-03-03). "How this Canadian start-up spotted coronavirus before everyone else knew about it". CNBC. Archived from the original on 2023-09-19. Retrieved 2020-04-26.
  4. "Bio.Diaspora: Preventing the next pandemic". MaRS Discovery District. 2011-11-24. Archived from the original on 2022-02-24.
  5. Webster, P. (2009-10-27). "Improved flu screening needed at airports". Canadian Medical Association Journal. 181 (9): E195–E196. doi:10.1503/cmaj.109-3053. ISSN 0820-3946. PMC 2764775. PMID 19770256.
  6. Allen, Kate (2016-02-22). "How a Toronto company used big data to predict the spread of Zika". Toronto Star. Archived from the original on 2023-09-19.
  7. Ogola, Willis (2021-01-13). "How AI predicted the Coronavirus Outbreak". Engineering Education (EngEd) Program | Section. Archived from the original on 2022-02-24.
  8. Bogoch, Isaac I; Brady, Oliver J; Kraemer, Moritz U G; German, Matthew; Creatore, Marisa I; Kulkarni, Manisha A; Brownstein, John S; Mekaru, Sumiko R; Hay, Simon I; Groot, Emily; Watts, Alexander; Khan, Kamran (2016-01-14). "Anticipating the international spread of Zika virus from Brazil". The Lancet. 387 (10016): 335–336. doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(16)00080-5. ISSN 0140-6736. PMC 4873159. PMID 26777915.
  9. "Who We Are". BlueDot. Archived from the original on 2023-07-12. Retrieved 2023-09-19.
  10. "BlueDot profiled in Toronto Star for anticipating Zika virus spread". Toronto Innovation Acceleration Partners. 2016-02-22. Archived from the original on 2023-09-19.
  11. "When the coronavirus hit, California turned to artificial intelligence to help map the spread". www.cbsnews.com. Retrieved 2020-04-26.
  12. Niiler, Eric. "An AI Epidemiologist Sent the First Alerts of the Coronavirus". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Archived from the original on 2021-07-12.
  13. Whitaker, Bill (2020-04-27). "The computer algorithm that was among the first to detect the coronavirus outbreak". CBS News. Archived from the original on 2023-05-12.
  14. Heaven, Will Douglas (2020-03-12). "AI could help with the next pandemic—but not with this one". MIT Technology Review. Archived from the original on 2023-09-05.
  15. Bilal, Muhammad (2021-06-23). "Digital Health: Opportunities For Entrepreneurs, Scientists And Doctors". ProPakistani. Retrieved 2021-07-01.
  16. Bogoch, Isaac I; Watts, Alexander; Thomas-Bachli, Andrea; Huber, Carmen; Kraemer, Moritz U G; Khan, Kamran (2020-01-14). "Pneumonia of unknown aetiology in Wuhan, China: potential for international spread via commercial air travel". Journal of Travel Medicine. 27 (2). doi:10.1093/jtm/taaa008. ISSN 1708-8305. PMC 7107534. PMID 31943059.
  17. "Canada's plan to mobilize science to fight COVID-19". Prime Minister of Canada. 2020-03-23. Archived from the original on 2022-02-24.
  18. Woolf, Marie (2022-05-05). "Canadians' trips to liquor stores, pharmacies tracked via phones during pandemic". CP24. Archived from the original on 2022-05-06.
  19. Kelly, Pat (May 2022). "Collection and use of mobility data by the Government of Canada and related issues" (PDF). House of Commons of Canada. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2022-07-26.
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